Yi Zhu

Yi Zhu

Assistant Professor, Mary and Jim Lawrence Fellow

Marketing

Education

PhD 2013
Business Administration University of Southern California

MA 2004
Economics, University of British Columbia

MA 2002
Management, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences

BE 1998
Industry Engineering, Shanghai University of Electric Power

Expertise

Search Advertising

Online Auctions

Media Slant

Social Media

Economies of China

Yi Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Marketing, Mary & Jim Lawrence Fellow at the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2013. He worked as a consultant at Shanghai Investment Consulting Corporation before he went to Vancouver, where he received his M.A. in Economics from University of British Columbia. His research interests focus on the application of industrial organization models in marketing, online auctions, search advertising, media slant, and Chinese economy. His recent works have appeared or forthcoming at Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing. 

In 2015, Zhu is the recipient of the John D.C. Little Award for the best marketing paper published in Marketing Science or Management Science, and the finalist for the Frank M. Bass Award for the best marketing paper derived from a Ph.D. thesis published in INFORMS journals. In 2016, he has been selected as a 2017 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar, a biennial award given to the most promising scholars in marketing who have distinguished themselves as potential leaders of the next generation of marketing academics. Zhu also won ShankarSpiegel Best Dissertation Proposal Award in 2012. His research was funded by 3M NonTenured Faculty Grant, the Marketing Science Institute Grant, Net Institute Grant, CIBER dissertation Grant, Carlson Dean''s Small Research Grant, and Dean''s Research Travel Grant.  Zhu has also won the 2011 James S. Ford/Commerce Associates Ph.D. Fellowship and many other awards during his time at USC. Among the 2013 graduates at USC, Zhu was one of the six awardees of the 2013 USC PhD Achievement Award.  In addition, Zhu was recognized by the Chinese Ministry of Education to be one of the top nine Chinese doctoral students studying abroad for his outstanding academic achievement and research in 2012 —among all graduate students across all subjects.

 

Selected Works

"Quality Score that Makes You Invest," (with Zsolt Katona)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954707

"Why Customer Service Frustrates Consumers: Exploiting Hassle Costs by a Tiered Customer Service Organization," (with Anthony Dukes)

"Prominent Attributes under Limited Attention," (with Anthony Dukes), forthcoming, Marketing Science, 2017

"When It’s Smart to Copy Your Competitor’s Brand Promise," (with Anthony Dukes), Harvard Business Review (HBR.org), March 23, 2017

https://hbr.org/2017/03/whenitssmarttocopyyourcompetitorsbrandpromise

"Effects of TV Advertising on Keyword Search," (with Mingyu Joo and Kenneth C. Wilbur) International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3):508523, 2016

"Position Auctions with BudgetConstraints: Implications for Advertisers and Publishers," (with Shijie Lu and Anthony Dukes), Marketing Science, 34(6):895905,2015

"Selective Reporting of Factual Content by Commercial Media," (with Anthony Dukes), Journal of Marketing Research, 52(1):5676, 2015

"Television Advertising and Online Search," (with Mingyu Joo, Kenneth C. Wilbur and Bo Cowgill) Management Science, 60(1): 56–73, 2014

"Hybrid Advertising Auctions," (with Kenneth C. Wilbur), Marketing Science, 30(2): 249273, 2011

"Click Fraud," (with Kenneth C. Wilbur), Marketing Science, 28(2): 293308, 2009

"Private Sector Industrialization in China: Evidence from Wenzhou," (with John Strauss, Edward Yanmin Qian, Minggao Shen, Dong Liu, Mehdi Majbouri, Qi Sun, Qianfang Ying), in Community, Market and Sate in Development, ed. by Keijiro Otsuka and Kaliappa Kalirajan, PalgraveMcMillan Publishing, 2010.

Current Activities

Honors and Awards

2018 Mary & Jim Lawrence Fellow, Carlson School of Management, UMN

2018 Finalist, Faculty of the Year, Carlson School of Management, UMN

2017 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar

2015 Winner, John D. C. Little Award for the Best Marketing Paper Published in Marketing Science or Management Science

2015 Finalist, Frank M. Bass Award for the Best Marketing Paper Derived from a Ph.D. Thesis Published in INFORMS Journals

2015 Haring Symposium Representative (Faculty), Indiana University

2013 3M Nontenured Faculty Grant

2013 USC PhD Achievement Award

2013 USC Graduate School Travel Award

2012 ShankarSpiegel Best Dissertation Proposal Award, Direct Marketing Association

2012 Extraordinary Potential Prize of Chinese Government Award for Outstanding SelfFinanced Students Abroad, Chinese Ministry of Education

2012 AMASheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow, University of Washington

2012 Summer Research Travel Grants, MarshallUSC

2011 James S. Ford/Commerce Associates Ph.D. Fellowship, MarshallUSC

2011 Fellow, Annual UH Doctoral Symposium, University of Houston

2010 Fellow, Workshop on Quantitative Marketing and Structural Econometrics, Duke University

20082013 USC Provost Fellowship, University of Southern California

2008, 2012 Fellow, INFORMS Marketing Science Conference Doctoral Consortium

 

Research Grants

20132015 Dean''s Small Grant, Carlson School of Management, UMN, $5,500

2012 The Center for International Business Education and Research Dissertation Grant, $1,000

2010 Marketing Science Institute and the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative Research Grant (with Kenneth C. Wilbur and Mingyu Joo), $12,000

2008 Net Institute Summer Research Grant (with Kenneth C. Wilbur), $3,000

2007 USChina Institute Graduate Summer Fieldwork Grants, USC, $2,700